Government and politics

In praise of those who serve. Yes, even under Trump. Especially under Trump.

Jennifer Pahlka – Code for America

Civil servants and civil services have ethical responsibilities for what they do. They can and must take account of the democratic mandate of the governments they serve, but that is a factor in the ethical judgements they make, it is not an exemption from the obligation to make them.

Usually when questions of this kind are discussed it is in the context of the limits beyond which government officials should not act, given that by strong implication politically neutral civil servants value the political, legal and civil system more highly than all the specific outcomes of that system. But this post is doubly interesting because it comes from the opposite direction: are there countervailing obligations, are there circumstances in which officials should continue in government despite fundamental disagreements with the policy and ethics of the political leaders they serve? The assertion here is that commitment to the values of public service can – and arguably should – lead people to stay in government both to sustain services to those who depend on them and to mitigate the worst consequences of bad policies and decisions. It’s a powerful argument. But it has the potential to be a profoundly undemocratic one. Democracies undoubtedly need checks and balances and in extremis, civil services can be such a check. But we should be worried – much more as citizens than as bureaucrats – when political and legal checks are insufficient to create an ethical balance.

Service design

Practical transformation: start by making things a bit less rubbish

Stephen Gill – Medium

Making things a bit less rubbish may sound a pale and uninspiring ambition. Set against the grand rhetoric of strategic change, it is certainly unassuming. But this post shouldn’t be overlooked because of its asserted modesty, for at least two important reasons.

The first is that making things a bit less rubbish is no small thing. Continuous attention to making things a bit less rubbish starts to make them a lot less rubbish and ultimately perhaps not rubbish at all. The second is that this is a wonderfully clear account of why mapping services from the perspective of users, rather than providers, is so powerful and so important. The ambition has been there for a long time, but the reality of actually doing it has lagged years behind, so it’s good to see real progress being made.

A few years ago, it looked as though joined up information might be as far as we would get: joined up information wouldn’t and couldn’t deliver a joined up government. With hindsight, that looks a little pessimistic in terms of the possibility of delivering better and more joined up services. But the thirty parts of government described in the post as being relevant to exports are all still there, and the question of how far service design can reality transcend those boundaries is still a very real one.